site.btaParents of Disabled Children with New Protest Rally

105 HOME AFFAIRS-PARENTS-PROTEST RALLY

Parents of Disabled Children
with New
Protest Rally


Sofia, June 1 (BTA) - Parents of children with disabilities Saturday held a new protest in front of the building of the Council of Ministers in Sofia. The protest was organized by the initiative "The System is Killing Us" which held continued protest rallies in 2018 and 2019 which resulted in an overhaul of the legislation concerning people with disabilities. Speaking to a BTA reporter on Saturday, Vera Ivanova from the initiative said that the new protest is "for the healthy children in the system of social assistance who have been placed in care institutions or foster parents instead of with their relatives".

Ivanova argued that the State pays huge financial resources to institutions "that imitate family care and that doom the biological parents of children who are faced with difficulties due to poverty". Ivanova gave examples of cases in which children were taken from their parents unjustifiably. She noted that one of the demands of the protest rally is the dismissal of social assistance directors when removal of children from their biological parents is not upheld by the court.

Ivanova said further that instead of biological parents the social support targets foster parents, so that another demand is to have equal monthly social assistance payments to children placed with foster parents and to children staying with relatives. "We want equal financial support so that children do not lose their connection with their parents and relatives who are faced with poverty," Ivanova said.

She noted that children "who had been in the system" participated in the protest rally to speak about what they underwent.

In a position released on Friday, the Labour and Social Policy Ministry said that "the removal of children from their parents has never been and will never be an objective of the national policies and legislation". The Ministry objects to allegations spreading on social media about "unlawful removal of children". The document says that the procedure for placing children in care outside their families has not been changed since 2006. "The social workers and the police are taking children from parents only when the children's loves and safety are in danger," the statement says. LY/ZH//